Waiting
by PallaPlease
Summary: [SPOILER-fic]  Sei introspective, following the series, on Rei, completeness, and Kira.  Rather proud of it, so reviews (^^) are always welcome.  [Finished]


Notes: I'm currently in Ismalia, Egypt, visiting my father (stationed overseas due to Air Force) and am completely without my Japanese volumes of MARS as well as my (highly incomplete) English ones. Therefore, any and all continuity errors are my own fault, so feel free to tell me.  
  
Warning! This fanfic has spoilers (of a sort) for the ending of MARS, so if you're following the Tokyopop publication, you might want to skip this. Your own discretion and all.  
  
--  
--  
Sei: Waiting  
--  
  
This is not her place, not her decision,  
to take him from me; haven't I  
waited long enough?  
  
I could smell his soul, coming to me  
over the distance and so I  
came, to find him, to protect him,  
to do for him what I never could.  
  
Hospitals frightened me in life,  
a common fear that - if I stayed too  
long, made no signs of   
leaving - it would make me ill and   
trap me within it. But if Rei, the  
other half of who we are, brave  
and strong and valiant and arrogant,  
if he was here - I would come.  
  
And so I did, piercing, however brief,   
the cloths of the mortal realm,  
still outfitted in my last raiment, still  
quiet and empty and smiling.   
  
The hospital did not betray my presence,  
the walls kept their secrets as I  
strode - silent, ghostly, dead -  
through it; how could I be seen by those  
who lived if I were dead? I felt no   
fear of sight or human.  
  
But she looked at me. She saw me, this  
girl with ruddy hair and a face so  
slick with dripping tears, so crystalline,   
like tender glass about to break, if I   
reached my hand out and  
thought to brush her cheek. I kept my   
surprise - he pushed everyone away,  
didn't he, what purpose would  
a girl have weeping for him? - and   
offered her a gentle smile, having  
thought to soothe her.  
  
She screamed, nearly jumping my  
tentative presence from   
this realm I am forbidden to be in  
to the realm of death I am  
now part of, and I hurried, passing  
unseen through the operating room -  
not long, Rei, I thought, we'll be   
together again, whole and everything  
I've ever wished to be.   
  
I bled into  
him, taking him to the place, the point  
where it all combusts and changes  
into new energy, new patterns of  
existence in death or life  
or essence.   
  
For us, my Rei and me, it  
was our roof, my hands clinging to the ledge  
and Rei slowly opening his eyes  
to feel the wind, the scent of  
death, and see me - waiting. A smile, then,   
holding my hand up with some effort for  
him to clasp - save me, I thought, and we  
can save each other, be forever - and he  
smiled back, my Rei,   
reaching for me to clasp my hand.  
  
I've missed you, I thought,  
and she came onto the roof, bleeding  
with the aching of her love through life  
into the dark void where Rei   
hovered. He froze, unmoving as he  
turned to look at her and I could tell,  
then, that he loved her more - more! -  
than he had ever loved me,  
loved Mother, loved Father, anyone,  
and I knew it was lost.  
  
"Come back!" she cried, holding *her*  
hand out as well, her smile so much more than  
mine could ever be. And the bond, the tie,  
more than sexual,  
more than emotional,  
more than familial,  
drew him back to her, a tug and a pull  
woven in with a deeper love that rooted him  
to her.  
  
The tree to the earth,   
the sun to the sky,  
the moon to the stars,   
myself to he,  
and he to her.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said, gently and oddly  
kind - when had my Rei ever truly been kind? -  
as he looked sadly at me. "I can't go to  
you," and almost as an afterthought,  
seeing the sadness on my face   
and the knowledge on hers, "yet."  
  
A promise, I thought as I felt their  
unity pulling them together, a new promise, then.  
  
I waited so long for him to come to me,  
empty and stripped of all life, and   
now I must wait again, too incomplete for  
heaven, too empty for hell. And it hurts   
that much more to think...  
  
If I had known her,  
I might have cared for her, too.  
  
--  
--  
End!  
--  
  
Feedback: As I don't usually write fanfiction in the form of poetry - heck, until four days ago I stirred away from it like it was cursed - but Sei's thoughts for this fic (which I've been mulling over for eight months, damn it, so it was fast becoming vital to my existence that I write this) fit themselves easier into the format of a free-verse poem than a narrative structure. So, basically, I'd be open to anything people could offer. Love ya and thanks! ^^  
  
Disclaimer: Sei, Rei, and Kira (as well as MARS itself) all belong to Souryo Fuyumi and, arguably, the various companies that have translated and printed it in equally various countries. But me being a firm believer in artistic integrity (with my own set of rules, to boot), I think the only true owner should be Souryo-sensei. Eh - I'm also delusional. ^- 


End file.
